APS Superintendent has been suspended for three days for his recent bullying tweets. A few things struck me in today’s Albuquerque Journal when it comes to Brooks and education in New Mexico.

For starters, it appears that the sanitation department fires people for offensive behavior has higher personal conduct standards than APS. But the real issue involves the lack of success of New Mexico’s entire education system (of which APS is a big part). That failure is borne out in our scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) which also happened to be covered in today’s paper.

Of particular interest to Rio Grande Foundation and others in terms of NAEP performance is 4th grade reading. After all, the idea is that children are generally learning to read up until 4th grade and after that they are reading to learn in all subjects. These scores formed the basis for our research on the “Florida Model,” parts of which were embraced by Gov. Martinez and have been opposed by APS in the Legislature. Unfortunately, even Gov. Martinez has not (publicly) embraced broad-based school choice in the ways Florida and Arizona have.

As seen in the chart below, two states, Florida and Arizona, both of which have embraced school choice, are seeing improved results on the NAEP. Florida’s reforms have been particularly impressive, but Arizona (a state that is in many ways similar to New Mexico) has achieved positive results in recent years as well through a broad array of choice programs.

New Mexico is among the poorest states in the nation depending on your measuring stick. It is also the least economically-free state in the nation according to the Canada-based Fraser Institute. Coincidence? I think not.

The latest international rankings of economic freedom are in from the Heritage Foundation and Fraser Institute recently published their international rankings of economic freedom and the results are not good. Shockingly-enough, the US population has grown increasingly-frustrated with slow economic growth and economic conditions on the whole.

We are down to 17th-most free in the Fraser study and yet the media remain almost completely oblivious to the issue and the potential connections. Neither political party really “gets” it or is willing to talk about it because the decline began during the Administration of George W. Bush when Republicans also controlled Congress. Needless to say, Democrats and their admirers in the media don’t want to focus on the accelerating decline in economic freedom under the Obama Administration either.

Check out the chart below from Heritage Foundation which actually paints a rosier picture of economic freedom in the US than does that Fraser Institute report:

Joe Montes, the head of Americans for Prosperity in New Mexico, had an excellent article on the need for Congress to allow wind tax credits to expire. We totally agree. The Rio Grande Foundation joined more than 100 other organizations around the country in expressing opposition to the ongoing subsidies. If you agree, you can contact Congress here.

Supporters of subsidies for wind will of course counter that fossil fuels are subsidized as well. And we agree that ALL such subsidies should be eliminated. However, when you actually look at which means of generating electricity receive the greatest taxpayer support, check out the following chart:

To say the least, wind is disproportionately subsidized relative to most other electricity sources. And, while Congress is the immediate focal point on this particular wind subsidy, New Mexico’s Renewable Portfolio Standard is another costly mandate. This recent study shows that such regulations result in higher electricity costs…one would think that such policies which directly harm the poor would be a concern for folks on the left, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Bullying in schools has become a national cause celebre. But what about bullying by school superintendents? The recent tweets in which he personally attacked both Gov. Martinez and Sec. Skandera and called them names are apparently only the most recent instance of his bad behavior.

According to the blog Diogenes’ Six, Brooks was a bully back in his days in Kansas as well.

I can’t imagine the head of New Mexico’s largest school district essentially calling the Secretary of Education who makes $258,560 a cow and getting away with it without serious repurcussions, can you?

Join the Rio Grande Foundation at this Albuquerque early evening event on November 19th featuring nationally sydicated columnist and Fox News contributor, Deroy Murdock

The supposedly unsinkable S.S. ObamaCare launched on October 1st to tremendous pomp and circumstance. A month later, it already has begun to slide into the sea, as the increasingly nervous passengers head for the lifeboats. What happens next? Will anyone survive this disaster?

Deroy Murdock has written extensively on ObamaCare and the concept of government medicine. He strongly believes that average citizens and voters should work to repeal this destructive law.

Murdock will discuss this burgeoning controversy at an upcoming Rio Grande Foundation event.

• When:  Tuesday, November 19, 2013 from 6:00PM to 7:30PM
• Where:  UNM School of Law, 1117 Stanford Dr. NE, Room 2401, Albuquerque, NM  87106
• What:  Light snacks and non-alcoholic beverages will be available
• Cost:  $10 payable in advance online here or at the door

New York political commenter Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a Senior Fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a supporter of about 460 free-market think tanks in 90 countries world-wide. Mr. Murdock’s column — “This Opinion Just In …” — reaches approximately 400 newspapers across America each week, including the New York Post, the Washington Times, the Boston Herald, and the San Francisco Examiner. He is a Fox News Contributor and has been a frequent guest on CNBC, CNN, C-Span, MSNBC, and other TV and radio outlets.

As a popular public speaker, he has lectured or debated at the Cato Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations; Harvard Medical School, the Heritage Foundation; the National Academy of Sciences; Dartmouth, Stanford, and Tulane universities; and various fora, from Bogotá to Buenos Aires to Budapest. He is a native of Los Angeles, a graduate of Georgetown University, and a resident of Manhattan, where he earned an MBA from New York University. His program included a semester of study at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Deroy Murdock hopes that someday the free society will bring him — and every American — more leisure time to experience fine dining, motion pictures, skiing, live music, and the priceless joys of friends and loved ones.

While the Rio Grande Foundation is best known for its work on economic policy issues, we have done a fair amount of work on criminal justice reform. I testified in Santa Fe before an interim committee dealing with criminal justice issues. Criminal justice reform is an important issue for New Mexico’s economy for a number of reasons. Obviously, it is very costly and directly impacts both the victims and the people who get sucked into the system. Then, there is the issue that New Mexico is the 4th-most dangerous state in the country according to a recent report. That’s not going to attract many businesses to our fair state.

The good news is that the Legislature will be tackling a variety of criminal justice-related reforms. The Santa Fe New Mexican had an interesting story about the effort which also included some information on Right on Crime and my involvement along with that of Rio Grande Foundation co-founder Hal Stratton.

According to this story, the ObamaCare website healthcare.gov cost an astonishing $292 million of your tax dollars. As if that were not enough, according to this article, 15 states that have set up their own exchange websites cost a total of $1 billion. This recent media report states that New Mexico’s exchange site will cost a staggering $30 million.

To say the least, there have been numerous, well-reported bugs in the ObamaCare law, but I’m not here to rehash those. What I’d like to know is why taxpayers should be on the hook for a website at all. For starters, there are private websites at which you can purchase health insurance. Cost to taxpayers: zero. Another analyst at Forbes argues that the absurd cost of these websites and their technical glitches is necessary to hide the true cost of the coverage provided under the law.

With anything in life, simpler is better. With government, that is even more important. How are average citizens supposed to keep tabs and hold accountable a government that is so large and complicated that no one could understand it. Health care doesn’t have to be this difficult. It is about a patient and their doctors. Perhaps ObamaCare’s flop will discredit the idea that someone else should pay for my health care? One can hope.

(Albuquerque) Reports of a higher education bubble have become commonplace in recent years. And, while recent data indicate that the trend is slowing, there is a growing belief that higher education in the United States is in need of a new, more cost-effective model.

In a new policy brief which is available here, Rio Grande Foundation Senior Fellow and higher education expert Pat Leonard outlines a new, “lean model” for higher education. Notes Leonard, “Not only has the price of higher education increased rapidly in recent years, but the quality of that education has declined as well.”

The solution, argues Leonard, is to create new, four year streamlined institutions, similar in many ways to K-12 charter schools, which would compete on the basis of value-added and rigorous cost control. Traditional budget formulation in higher education tends to view the bulk of institutional costs as fixed. The Lean College’s budget formulation will regard few if any as fixed. It will provide quality baccalaureate instruction at a minimum cost.

The idea of the “Lean College” is to cut out some of the unnecessary frills like fancy buildings, professors forced to split their time between teaching and research, and the need for expensive sports teams and facilities.

The concept is meant to re-focus higher education on its core and restore the high-quality, low-cost option to American higher education.

Reading Winthrop Quigley’s column today in the Albuquerque Journal about the conflicting best and worst states in terms of taxation is a less-than-enlightening exercise. The article notes New Mexico’s relatively good performance on a Kiplinger’s report on taxes and compares it with our performance on a separate report by Tax Foundation.

For starters, focusing on taxes alone is somewhat misguided if you are trying to understand economic growth. Overall economic freedom which includes regulations and overall property rights is a far better measure of a state’s likely economic prowess.

Secondly, as Richard Anklam notes, methodology and priorities are important. I can’t really figure out what Kiplinger’s is measuring and Quigley fails to mention that the Tax Foundation report measures business taxation, not overall taxes. According to the Federation of Tax Administrators report on tax burdens as a percent of income, New Mexico is 14th.

Lastly, what you tax matters. If you want more of something, tax it less, if you want less of something, tax it more. New Mexico needs more people working and building private sector businesses, and fewer receiving government benefits. As Art Laffer and Stephen Moore pointed out in a Rio Grande Foundation report, states that refrain from taxing personal income experience much faster growth than those that heavily tax work.

Need more evidence? Just look at the economic growth taking place in Texas!

Did RGF make a mistake by supporting legal reforms for the Spaceport during the 2013 legislative session? I’ve already asked that question here, but the latest news is that Virgin Galactic has again postponed its initial launch combined with construction delays at the visitors center will result in the Spaceport Authority asking for $7 million from the taxpayers during the 2014 legislative session.

The experience of the Spaceport is a classic case of government mal-investment. Gov. Richardson was sure that human space flight would be “the next big thing” and he was willing to spend other peoples’ money to make it happen (and then take full credit). Unfortunately, there is a widely-acknowledged “spaceport glut” and the longer this process drags on, the more New Mexicans will be forced to spend and the less likely the Spaceport is to succeed.

So, do legislators pour good money after bad or do we cut our losses on what is quickly becoming a money pit?

I have long touted the Rio Grande Foundation as “New Mexico’s only free market think tank.” I stand behind that statement, but must admit that I am pleased with some of the recent work of Think New Mexico. Specifically, I urge readers to obtain a copy of the organization’s new report on New Mexico’s jobs crisis. The entire report is not available online at this time. We have certainly disagreed with Think New Mexico in the past, including their passionate calls for elimination of taxes on groceries which was enacted during the Richardson Administration in exchange for a higher gross receipts tax rate).

I have previously analyzed the report’s recommendations which were covered in the media (analysis here), but I didn’t get an actual copy of the report until recently. While the recommendations were okay, the research painted a clear picture of New Mexico’s failures to embrace free markets and limited government. Repeatedly, points explained in the report echo arguments and data brought to bear by the Rio Grande Foundation:

1) New Mexico is too reliant on an increasingly unreliable government in Washington (this is kind of a no-brainer, but good luck convincing our Senators that it is time to dial things back);

2) To thrive, New Mexico needs to embrace entrepreneurial mindset and policies that will generate private sector jobs;

3) Our higher education system must be more efficient and competitive (although Think NM recommends providing scholarships for foreign students, their research clearly illustrates that New Mexico’s higher education system is heavily-subsidized for in-state students and costly for out-of-state students to the point that our schools are not attractive for those students).

4) Industry-specific subsidies and corporate welfare are ineffective. They cite several examples that we have discussed including Schott Solar and Santa Fe Studios.

In other words, Think New Mexico, at least in terms of its critiques of the status quo, is echoing stuff we’ve said for years. The major difference is that our recommendations, Right to Work, tax reform, regulatory reductions/reform, and a less-subsidized, more competitive higher education system, are even more politically-challenging than their proposals (which face their own political challenges with the current Legislature). Of course, our recommendations also attack the problems more directly.

In conclusion, we may disagree on policy prescriptions and tactics, but we welcome the organization’s free market critique of New Mexico’s policies.

Join the Rio Grande Foundation at this Albuquerque luncheon event on November 21st featuring Travis H. Brown, author of the book How Money Walks.

Click here for event registration form.

About the author:

How Money Walks author Travis H. Brown is a Missouri-based entrepreneur with a passion for helping cities and states grow via smart tax policies. He's a frequent contributor to Forbes.com and has appeared on various radio and television broadcasts such as Fox Business Network, CNBC, Newsmax.com, the American Entrepreneur, and CSPAN. As a state lobbyist who has advocated across 25 states over the last 20 years, his unique experience led his firm, Pelopidas, LLC to find a way to share how working wealth was moving nationwide.

Tackling tough issues that often miss their moment is a source of pride in Brown's issue-based work. Civic leaders such as the late Lamar Hunt, then the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs Football Club, hired his firm to pursue funding solutions for restoring Arrowhead Stadium. Medical doctors across the fields of anesthesia, cardiology, and orthopedic medicine have worked with his team to improve patient safety and tort reform laws. Over the last several years, Brown has applied his attention to increasing tax policy awareness through the passage of several statewide ballot initiatives related to earnings taxes and city governance. Brown now serves as president of Let Voters Decide, a coalition that supports state tax reform and the protection of voters' rights at the ballot box.

Brown's career advising governors, chief executives, legislatures, mayors, and venture philanthropists got started by lobbying for his alma mater, the University of Missouri-Columbia. His undergraduate degrees were in agricultural economics and political science from Mizzou, with an MBA from Washington University in Saint Louis. His corporate work in sales, marketing, and government affairs has included such companies or clients as the American Home Products Corporation, the Monsanto Company, the Oracle Corporation, the American Petroleum Institute, and Procter & Gamble.

By bush flying America to spread the results about where our growth is going, Brown hopes to inspire new small business champions, non-profit charities, and community leaders to prepare their regions for our highly-mobile age. Brown remains a serial small business owner at heart with his wife and co-owner Rachel, but applies his passions for flying, bird hunting, sports, and wine collecting every chance that he gets.

Click here for event registration form.

Book only:

If you can't make the event but would love a signed copy of the book, click here.

I recently dove into the hunger controversy (more on that here). There was a lot of back and forth about the relative seriousness of the hunger situation and whether government programs meant to address the problem are effective.

One research item from the Cato Institute argues that the SNAP (food stamp) expansion seen in recent years has done little to reduce hunger.

According to the report:

Even setting aside the growing cost and doubtful effectiveness, SNAP is an inefficient, fraud-ridden, and deeply troubled program.

For example, SNAP’s administrative costs are considerably higher than those of most other social welfare programs. In 2013, the program’s total administrative expenses at both the federal and state level are expected to top $7 billion, more than 9 percent of program costs. The federal share of administrative expenses alone is more than $4.5 billion, and that is expected to increase to almost $6 billion by 2023.

So, perhaps hunger is a serious problem in our state, but SNAP doesn’t seem to be a very efficient way to mitigate the problem. I remain convinced of the merits of the old “you give a man a fish…vs. teaching a man to fish.” We need to boost New Mexico’s economy and alleviate poverty, thus reducing hunger.

After all, government programs are not a long-term solution to poverty as they can only cure the immediate lack of food, but not the long-term issues.

Ezra Klein, a writer and blogger at the Washington Post is a liberal guy and a supporter of the ObamaCare health law, but he’s independent-minded enough to state the truth, even when it hurts. That is why this piece from Klein detailing the myriad and deep difficulties with the law is so important. Of course, as an opponent of the law, my belief is that the law’s flaws boil down to basic economics, but Klein’s analysis details the very real issues facing the Obama Administration’s failure to successfully implement the systems upon which ObamaCare depends.

Klein’s final line sums up the situation nicely, “Obamacare isn’t a political abstraction any longer. Its success doesn’t depend on spin or solidarity. What matters for the law — and for the people who are depending on it — is how well it actually works. So far, it’s not working well at all. If and when that changes, our coverage of the health-care law will change, too.”

HT: Michael Cannon

The following chart appeared in the Albuquerque Journal on Monday. It largely tracks with what we already know: Our state is incredibly reliant on the oil and gas (and to an extent other extractive) industries. Second, that government plays a major role in our economy, and that we are not much of a manufacturing or “headquarters” state.

I managed to track down the source of the report here. It’s an interesting read. Noteworthy is the fact that the numbers in the chart above represent national averages and that due to the smaller overall size of the energy and mining sector in most states, New Mexico’s mining/logging sector is much larger than the national average. Conversely, despite government being a far greater percentage of the economy in each state, our government sector is an astonishing 46% greater in terms of employment than the national average.

You really can make data say anything if you torture your assumptions enough. A liberal think tank has come up with a new study claiming that fast food companies are costing taxpayers more than billions of dollars annually.

How can businesses that employs hundreds of thousands of Americans annually actually harm the economy? That’s easy, just assume that every American already has a “living wage” and then subtract any shortfalls created by fast food workers’ low incomes. After all, if these workers require ANY government assistance at all, this is inherently the responsibility of their employer, right?

Reminds me of the old joke about economists: A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, “Lets smash the can open with a rock.” The chemist says, “Let’s build a fire and heat the can first.” The economist says, “Lets assume that we have a can-opener…”

Sorry folks, but the default status of humanity in this world is not a living wage. It is poverty. And, to the extent that a minimum wage job raises someone above abject poverty, it is a good, not a bad thing (not to mention the experience you gain). For example, I worked at a Wendy’s back in the day. This was useful in my professional growth.

Also, unlike government programs that are supposedly meant to ameliorate poverty, fast food companies deliver desired products that create value. Government just taxes other productive areas of the economy including the fast food industry. Then they transfer that money to other programs which may or may not have their desired result.

Of course, if fast food chains took the economically-ignorant advice of increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, more Americans would be unemployed because the industry would automate even more of its stores. I’m not sure how that would be good for workers. Lastly, if you do want to earn $15 an hour in fast food, check out North Dakota. Closer to home, I hear Midland, TX with an unemployment rate hovering near the lowest in the nation is also paying high wages to fast food workers.

To the extent that college graduates and other skilled workers are getting stuck in fast-food jobs, we need to look at national and state economic policies that are killing good-paying jobs…ObamaCare, lack of Keystone XL approval, just to name two…

Author and historian Amity Shlaes spoke recently in Albuquerque (and Tularosa) about our nation’s 30th president, Calvin Coolidge and her biography of him. Video of Shlaes’ talk is available below:

Author and Historian Amity Shlaes Discusses Calvin Coolidge in Albuquerque from Paul Gessing on Vimeo.

Also, if you are interested in purchasing an autographed copy of Shlaes’ book on Coolidge, they can be purchased online here for the cover price of $35 which includes shipping or by phone at: 505-264-6090.

For additional coverage of the event, check out Rob Nikolewski’s story and interview with Amity Shlaes.

I don’t know if Sen. Tom Udall is expecting a tough race from Republican Senate candidate David Clements or if he expects someone with deeper pockets to enter the race, but he seems to be covering his bases as the 2014 campaign approaches. The latest indicator that Udall is serious about getting re-elected by appealing to New Mexicans’ common-sense is this front-page story from the Farmington Daily-Times on Udall’s efforts to push for increased exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

As noted in the article, the Rio Grande Foundation did a report explaining the potential benefits to New Mexico’s economy of exporting LNG. Udall’s position in support of LNG exports is not a new one, much to the dismay of radical environmentalists like the Sierra Club who would like Americans to get “beyond natural gas.”

Glad to see bi-partisan support among New Mexico’s Congressional delegation for this common-sense policy, despite pressure from the hard-line “environmentalists.” It would be nice if the Obama Administration was more active in its support of LNG exports.

With all of the debate going on about testing and teacher evaluations, we feel that it is important to remind New Mexico’s education leaders of the importance of broad-based school choice and the importance of enhanced educational options for students. Here is a recent interview Paul Gessing did on the issue of education reform:

9-10-13 School Choice-digital learning from Paul Gessing on Vimeo.

Rob Nikolewski over at Capitol Report New Mexico had an interesting article this week about various ideas for weening New Mexico’s economy off of the federal teat. I offered some ideas as did Fred Nathan of Think New Mexico (I critiqued their proposals here).

Certainly, the Chamber is correct in noting that improving our educational system is an important part of turning around our economy as well, but my hunch is that getting economic reforms like pro-growth tax reform and a right to work law would do more for the economy right away.

And, as Rob noted, our friends at Voices for Children are proposing even more reliance on Washington. That is one reason liberals get so exercised about anything that threatens their precious government programs.

I find the mental gymnastics of left-liberals to be amusing and confusing sometimes. By now, we all know that Mayor Berry, a conservative, won re-election with 68% of the vote, thus overcoming efforts by the government employee unions both during the campaign and prior to the campaign when the election law was changed to force a runoff unless candidates received 50% or more of the vote.

The gymnastics come into play in this Albuquerque Journal article in which mayoral challenger Pete Dinelli and successful city council candidate Ike Benton complain about the public financing system. Said Dinelli, “I think public financing has pretty well proven to be totally ineffective.”

The article also included quotes from Timothy Krebs, a University of New Mexico professor who studies urban politics, said $362,000 probably isn’t enough for a mayoral campaign in Albuquerque. “What’s required is a sufficient amount of money to mount a credible challenge,” Krebs said.

So, what’s the problem here? Sour grapes because a conservative won the Mayor’s race? Are we looking at even more generous taxpayer-financed contributions to candidates if the liberals get their way? We always hear from the left about the harms of money in politics and Benton even personally attacked a private citizen who contributed money to defeat him.

I don’t know if Albuquerque’s public financing system will stay, go, or be reformed, but the whole debate over campaign financing seems to be more about politics than election fairness.

We’ve been writing a lot about the issue of transferring some federal lands to state control. After all, nothing leads to the realization that Washington can’t manage its assets like….well, Washington being unable to manage its assets.

Check out this excellent article from Dan Mitchell over at the Cato Institute. Also, there is an excellent video from PERC detailing how the private sector could manage many federal lands, including national parks, more effectively than Washington:

Momentum is building! Let Gov. Martinez know that you want her to put the Transfer of Public Lands Act on the agenda for the 2014 legislative session!

(Albuquerque) For all of the problems facing our elected officials in Congress particularly and Washington, DC, in general, a new Rio Grande Foundation paper details how the underpinnings of our republic are being undermined by the never-ending growth of the federal bureaucracy.

In the new brief, “No Legislation without Representation,” the authors detail how Congress has abdicated its responsibilities to legislate and has instead given the tacit go-ahead to bureaucracies to enact the equivalent of legislation with minimal discussion or input on the issues from elected officials or the voting public.

As the authors note, the ObamaCare health care law may be the “poster child” for this trend, but the trend goes back to at least the New Deal policies of the Roosevelt Administration.

While some may be sanguine about the trend toward ever-greater adoption of extra-democratic regulations, there are real economic impacts inherent in allowing a nearly unlimited number of bureaucrats “legislate” out of sight rather than demanding that 535 elected officials do so in public on national cable television.

The authors note that, “In 1949 there were 19,335 pages of regulations. In 2011 there were 169,301 small-typed pages, an increase by a factor of eight over a period of 62 years.” The financial impact of these regulations is reflected in a GDP that analyses suggest could be as high as $54 trillion instead of the $16 trillion we have today. As an example, the regulations created to support ObamaCare have had a direct effect on employment. The results of a survey on ObamaCare shows 41% of surveyed businesses froze hiring because of the health care law,

19% said they have reduced employees, and 38% said they have reduced growth plans.

Perhaps worse than the economic impact is the negative impact this change has had upon openness in government. Even the most interested of American citizens, it is impossible to know what is going on with their government.

As James Madison noted in Federalist No. 62, “It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be to-morrow.”

Americans are limited in their tools for addressing the problem of nameless, faceless bureaucrats legislating from various agencies, but understanding that there is a problem is a first step to getting a grasp on the problem.

With so much of the attention related to the government shutdown focused on America’s National Parks, it is a welcome development that Washington is allowing states to pay to keep the parks within their boundaries open. Some states are taking the offer while others, including New Mexico, are not.

As I wrote recently, the message is clear: when Washington fails, the states can and often will step up to solve the problem. It was the intent of America’s Founding Fathers that states manage a vast majority of resources and economic policies that are not managed by individuals and their businesses. Check out the 9th and 10th amendments.

Of course, RGF is going to continue to support federalism in general and state control of federally-controlled lands and we recognize that this will be a long-term struggle. However, allowing the states to financially support the National Parks within their borders is a tacit admission by Washington that states are better, more responsible stewards of these resources.